“The Grey” is simple but not shallow, focused but not constricted, pointed but not single-minded. Joe Carnahan, directing from a short story by his co-screenwriter Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, has made a taut, lean, intense drama about men-against-the-elements that has strains of Stephen Crane, Jack London and Albert Camus in it yet should satisfy action and horror fans.

The story couldn’t be more streamlined: An airplane carrying a couple of dozen oil rig workers crashes in remote Alaska, and seven men survive. One, a loner named Ottway, has been employed as a sniper, protecting his fellow workers from ravaging wildlife, an unusual specialty that becomes vital when the survivors realize that they’ve been dropped into the hunting grounds of an angry and well-organized pack of wolves. Ottway must take control of the disgruntled, frightened and untamable men around him and use his survival skills and knowledge of wolves to keep their slim hopes of rescue alive.

The film is set amid breathtaking landscapes, terrifying storms and horrifically dark nights. There are scenes of men baring themselves to each other and of muscle-clenching action. Over time, various preservation schemes present themselves to the tiny troupe, but more frequently their numbers are reduced, one at a time, by the elements or, worse, the predators.

There’s a cruel irony in living through a plane crash without significant injury only to find yourself confronting even greater peril on the ground. And, aside from the black humor of that grim fate, the single thing that keeps this improvised band of brothers intact -- and imparts to the audience the sense that the ordeal can be survived -- is the casting of Liam Neeson as Ottway.

Neeson worked with Carnahan on “The A-Team,” a blip for which both men can now be forgiven. Here, they’re both leaner and meaner than in that contrived lark. Neeson brings the expected lordly hardiness to bear, to much better effect than in his recent run of B-grade action pictures. Ottway has a fair bit of action hero in him, of course, but he’s deep and conflicted, with persuasive stores of rue and the gumption to call out God himself when things are truly dire. At one point, Neeson inveighs against the heavens in a way that no other action movie star of the modern era could attempt without leaving the audience in stitches, and he more than sells it; he makes you feel it. (Kudos, too, to Frank Grillo as challenger to Ottway’s authority and to Dermot Mulroney as a man simply not fit for the struggle in which he finds himself.)

Carnahan, too, makes you feel things: the lashing cold, the empty wind, the ghastly taunts of wolfish howls and, in one unforgettable sequence, of beastly eyes piercing the night. And there are terrific action sequences throughout, starting with the plane crash and continuing through to near the very end. Even though it often pauses to talk -- and philosophically (or, at least, pseudo-philosophically) -- the film is breathless.

Genre movies are often mere excuses for shows of gore and tricked-up suspense, and while “The Grey” should satisfy anyone who seeks only that there’s something more profound and pure at its heart, making it a genuinely entertaining thriller that puts a chill through you in more ways than one.